Mixing it up

Shane Long talks to the Dublin Ladies Craft Beer Society

A footnote to Monday's post on the Franciscan Well Easter Beer Festival today. Founder Shane was keen to show off the new education centre that they've put into the upstairs bar, the walls decorated with flavour wheels, brewing diagrams and tutored tasting instructions.

Last year the bar was dedicated to some special cask beers from Molson Coors stablemate Sharp's, and it was the same this time, only with a bigger range and shinier handpumps. With all the Irish beer available downstairs I had only one small taste of one of them: Six Hop, a 3.8% ABV bitter which tasted terribly dull and biscuity for something that uses the H-word in its name. How big a batch did they put the six hop cones into?

The 'Well itself had a couple of new releases downstairs. One is called Eggenstien and is a 5.5% ABV pale brown German bock. It tastes quite inoffensive, striking the right balance between rounded grain flavours and the grassy tang of noble hops, but the smell of it really got to me. I struggle with German noble hops at the best of times and this beer just reeked of the green nettle acridity that turns my stomach. I'm sure it will have its fans among the bock-drinking community but it was just too full-on for me.

I try to avoid writing about beers that are simply blends of other beers. Some of the more geek-focused continental breweries are a little too fond of doing this and I don't feel obliged to provide space for their mixes. However, I'm making an exception for Franciscan Well's Spring Fusion, also available at the Easter Festival. This is a straight saison blended with the brewery's longtime flagship Rebel Red. The result is a fascinating combination of crisp tartness next to totally incongruous red ale toffee and caramel. It shouldn't work, but it does: at once palate cleansing, thirst quenching and comfortingly warm.

Of course, The Franciscan Well are not merely confined to Cork these days. The long reach of Molson Coors and their PR team brought beers and brewer to Dublin last month for an evening's ligging in the opulent surrounds of House bar and restaurant on Leeson Street. After a 4km walk in the warm Spring sunshine, the free Blue Moon on arrival was the nicest Blue Moon I've ever tasted. Mind you, sucking the orange slice was even better than the beer. We also got a try of the new seasonal Summer Honey Wheat. It's pretty poor, as it goes, much like the other Blue Moon seasonals: an aroma consisting of no more than a trace of sugar, and a flavour to match. Some minor honey stickiness is just about detectable on the finish but very little else is going on. I'd swap back to regular Blue Moon in an instant.

Also on the preview list for the evening was Chieftain, an IPA which looks to be joining the permanent draught line-up. It's 5.5% ABV and is another one of those dark oily pale ales, like Porterhouse Hop Head or JW Sweetman Pale Ale. This is, of course, a good thing. The hop combination is Tettnanger, Magnum and Citra, though it hides this at first, presenting burnt caramel and toffee in the aroma to begin with. This dark malt theme continues in the first sip, some almost coffeeish notes come into play, quickly followed by a dank green funk of the sort found in many an amber ale, and bringing to mind BrewDog's 5AM Saint in particular. Rather than bitterness, there's a sharp citric piquancy, followed by a long resinous, palate-coating finish. Those who prefer their IPAs to have a bit more fresh zing to them might rather think of this as an amber, but either way it's a good beer and a welcome addition.

On the above evidence, Molson Coors Ireland seems to be strongly outperforming its American and British brethern.

Ego Patricius

Time was, a new Irish beer review was a special effort I put in for St Patrick's Day. These days it's hard to keep up. So here's a round-up of my last few weeks of Irish beer exploring, for the day that's in it.

Meath newcomers Brú quietly released their first IPA last month, called Rí. Well, it seemed quiet to me: first I saw of it was when it became the début cask beer served from 57 The Headline's new beer engine. It's 5.5% ABV and, thanks to the chilly weather, arrived in my glass beautifully cool. All the right notes are there for a refreshing English-style pale ale: the juicy peach and mandarin without any of the harsher bitterness of the less-genteel IPA-brewing nations. But it's no lightweight, the alcohol content lending it a decent heft. Sip or slurp: your choice. I will say I don't think I got the best of it as the barrel was rushed from brewery to bar on the day so there was a bit of a yeasty, bready burr to it. I noticed the bottled version in the shops lately and would be hoping for a cleaner experience from that. If it can retain the hop complexity of the cask edition it will be a real treat.

Continuing the hop theme, Franciscan Well Double IPA was a nice surprise when it showed up on tap far from home in Against the Grain. It's a perfectly clear glassful, somewhere between dark orange and pale amber and smells worryingly of toffee more than hops. It's better on tasting, however: pithy, in an old world IPA sort of way. Do I detect the orangey overtones of Styrians, perhaps? Either way I get a distinct echo back to former Franciscan Well classic Alpha Dawg. The crystal malt sweetness becomes more apparent as it warms rounding it off rather nicely. Like Rí it's a well-mannered and approachable hop-forward beer.

The award for having fun with hops goes to Carlow Brewing and their new, ambitious, O'Hara's Amber Adventure, making its first appearance the week before last as part of a tap-takeover at Farrington's. The plan is a rolling programme of amber ales under the same name, representing a world tour of hop growing regions. We start the quest in New Zealand, the first iteration being a showcase for Pacific Gem and Motueka. An effort has been made at keeping things light and sessionable, so it's only 4.1% ABV and rather pale for the style. But it's far from insipid: the drinking experience is bookended by a big bitter hit at the start and a lingering acidity at the finish. The wonderful hop complexity forms the meat in this hop sandwich: all funky, weedy, resinous dank which is lightened, though not balanced, by mild candy caramel malt. As the colour previously suggested, the malt element is very much understated compared to other amber ales, and while it's good that the hops are pushed to the front, it does mean the end result is a little on the watery side. That said, no other Irish beer offers so much hoppy impact in such a sessionable package, and that makes it a very welcome addition.

Moving on from the hops... Wait, no, that's not how we roll in Ireland these days. Sticking with hops to the very last, a new seasonal from JW Sweetman: Intergalactic, a 6.8% ABV amber ale. My apologies for the utterly abysmal photo which makes it look like an opaque soupy mess, it's really quite see-through, though is a dark amber colour. One sniff delivers a blast of satsuma zest, in case it wasn't clear enough from the name that Aussie hop Galaxy is in the house. Tasting gives you a rapid flash of orange segment quickly followed by a sterner bitterness. There's a similar resinousness to that found in the house Pale Ale. The malt sits on the sidelines providing a modest amount of balance -- no toffee or caramel interfering here. Overall, an interesting side-step from the Pale Ale, but I was still glad to get back to a proper pint of the latter afterwards.

And never to be outdone when Irish micros are throwing hops around, Galway Bay Brewery have another one from their pilot series which has been around a while but I only just caught up with it last weekend. It's billed as a Cascadian Dark Ale, 6.8% ABV and served exclusively on cask. The aroma from the opaque dark brown beer is an innocent and inviting sherbet citrus smell, but its true colours are revealed on tasting as a much more harsh, rather waxy, bitterness. The dark malts play good cop to this, adding a cakey sweetness and a comforting creamy texture. Complex and thought-provoking: just what you want from a one-off small-batch brew.

So that's what's going on here. Meanwhile I'm off to Italy this morning, to spread the good news from Ireland to the Romans, like St Patrick in reverse.

Cottoning on

The Cotton Ball pub sits on a street corner in the sprawling Cork suburb of Mayfield, and has done long before there was any sprawl. The Lynches established it in 1874 and it has remained in family ownership ever since. The large public bar at the front opens out into an even bigger lounge area in an extension to the rear and to the casual observer it looks like any other neighbourhood local. However, last year the owners took the decision to start making their own beers and a room on the lower ground floor has been converted for brewing.

Brewing legend and West Cork resident Brendan Dobbin was called in to set up the kit, the vessels acquired second-hand from the UK. Dobbin was also given the task of designing the recipes for new head brewer Humphrey Lynch, starting with a lager and a stout. The official launch of the brewery was held last Saturday, along with the release of the third beer in the series, a pale ale. I got the heads up from Cork food blogger Billy Lyons and -- brewpubs being my first love when it comes to beer -- I decided to go along for the day.

Mayfield Gold is the name of the lager, though the name is a little euphemistic. It's yellow, a rather unappetising pale yellow, if I'm honest. I wasn't expecting much from it and the enormous volume of fizz feeding the fine mousse head did nothing to help that. There's little in here to scare the drinker of mass produced lagers: it's mostly quite sweet, but just on the finish you get a generous helping of waxy grassy noble hops. Bar manager Kevin, who showed me round the brewery, said this beer gets triple filtered, and I'm a little surprised that the delicate hop flavours survived the process. Overall, Mayfield Gold would make for a good sunny day refresher, if only it wasn't so damn fizzy.

While the lager gets all the filter's attention, Kerry Lane Pale Ale escapes unscathed. This is a murky copper colour and could easily pass for an Irish red on appearances. The aroma sets the record straight: a jolt of citrus, fresh from the hopsack. The murkiness makes its presence felt in the foretaste, where there's a yeasty savoury edge which I don't think helps the hops. They come into their own a second or two later, blending gunpowder spice, dank and pine resin, plus a strawberry and chocolate sweetness as counterbalance. The pine bitterness gets the final word in, coating the palate completely. It's a subtle beer and one that takes a few goes to get into properly, but it was the one I came back to and stuck with for the evening. In its dark resinousness there's a certain resemblance to JW Sweetman Pale Ale, though I think it's a little more full-bodied than that. As a footnote, the menu description hints that this is based on a multi-award-winning Dobbin recipe, though Humphrey wasn't able to tell me which one. I'll add an update here if I find out, Dobbin fans.

The line-up is completed by Lynch's Stout, made from five malts plus roasted barley. That there's chocolate and crystal in the mix is immediately apparent as it's on the sweet side without much by way of dryness or astringency, which I quite liked about it. It's nicely full bodied as well, a contribution which I'm guessing comes from the wheat addition. But the bonus feature is the hopping: some lovely fresh green Goldings complete the picture, adding a vegetal wholesomeness. I don't want to come across as only understanding these Cork beers in terms of Dublin ones, but there's a similarity with Wrassler's XXXX here, though with a lighter touch. Drinkers of Benny McCabe's excellent Mi Daza stout may also find Lynch's somewhat familiar.

If you're in Cork and have the time, it's well worth jumping on the 208 bus to Mayfield and paying The Cotton Ball a visit. It's a reminder that Irish craft beer isn't just for specialist pubs with vast tap arrays: it can appear anywhere that there's a few spare square metres of floorspace and sufficient ambition.

JW Sweetman: an appraisal

A bit over eight years ago I wrote a post called "Messrs Maguire: an appraisal", a diatribe on Dublin's only brewpub composed in my usual high-handed snobby style, disappointed that what should be a jewel of the beer scene in this beery city was not living up to its potential. The root cause, I guess, was the Master of the Universe whose name was on the deeds of the building. He was one of the property élite during Ireland's boom years, and Messrs Maguire opened its doors in the closing years of the 20th century, just as the Celtic Tiger began to stretch its legs.

We can consider ourselves lucky that the Georgian frontage of 1 and 2 Burgh Quay, overlooking O'Connell Bridge, survived at all in the often corrupt and heritage-hostile development environment of 1990s Ireland. The original planning application dated 7th September 1995 called for the complete demolition of the buildings and their replacement with "new four storey public house/restaurants and ancillary services over a self contained basement nightclub". The drawings are not available online but I suspect that the monstrous O'Connell Bridge House next door gives us an idea of how the character of the quay might have been changed. Thankfully, Dublin Corporation refused the application. The subsequent submission, made on 7th February 1997, was no longer a demolition but "Restoration and renovation", keeping the number of main storeys to the original three.

Whether a microbrewery was always part of the plans I cannot say. And how they manoeuvred it inside is another mystery. The kit still bears the boilerplates of beer engineering supremo Brendan Dobbin and the vessels are of a size which suggests the walls and floors were installed around them. The showpiece mashtun and kettle are on display in the front window while the more functional stainless fermentation vessels sit below the pavement above, peekable-at from the basement bar.

Near neighbour The Irish Times makes its first mention of Messrs Maguire in the weekend supplement of 7th November 1998, in a scattergun piece on beer, brewing and food written by the late Michael Jackson of Beer Hunter fame. He cites it -- "opening in the next few weeks" -- as an indicator of the flavour-driven revolution happening in Irish beer. It's probably safe to assume that the grand opening of Messrs Maguire was in time for Christmas 1998. The 'Times's end-of-year review published on 29th December poignantly marks '98 as a good year for "super-pubs", boasting that "Zanzibar, Pravda, Life, Messrs Maguire and the Odeon in Dublin continue to give the now passé night-club scene a run for its money". All were casualties of the overblown economy, mostly early ones too. Only the Odeon survives at time of writing, though it has spent more time closed than open in recent years.

The Irish Times, 6th February 1999

I don't remember my first visit to Messrs Maguire, only that I would not have left a new Dublin brewpub unvisited for very long, especially since I was living 200 metres away at the time, in the Front Square of Trinity College. My dominant memory of the early days were of Dublin Pale -- a so-so brownish orange ale which fascinated me solely because it came from a handpump like what you get in England. I also recall a lending library made up of first editions of great Irish works of literature, available free to customers on payment of a deposit. The cask ale and the library, like my enchantment with Messrs Maguire, didn't last very long. It soon became clear that the owners had little regard for the brewing side and though there was always at least one house beer on tap, it was otherwise just another loud and uncomfortable swill-slinging Dublin drinking barn. Which is where this blog came in in May 2005.

A lot of water has passed under O'Connell Bridge since then. There was a brief experiment with bottled beer in 2007, never to be repeated and doing nothing for the pub's reputation among beer fanatics. The brewery spent its tenth birthday on hiatus following a decision by its second incumbent -- Cuilán Loughnane -- to swear off the nightmare daily commute from Tipperary and open his own brewery closer to home, choosing to produce Messrs Maguire beer there instead. This was followed by a short renaissance a couple of years ago when the neglected kit was fired up again under new brewer Mel, and a genuine effort was made to turn the place around. Unfortunately, this effort did not even have time to peter out properly as the macroeconomic tide which bitchslapped Ireland in 2010 hit home on Burgh Quay two years later.  Our absentee plutocrat had all of his toys rounded up and taken away by the government, leaving him with the shirt on his back and, bizarrely, the Messrs Maguire brand name.

Fortunately for us the drinkers, the pub didn't stay closed for long and its new state-sponsored management seems determined to make the obvious use of it that we've so long been wanting to see. The current head brewer is Rob Hopkins (with his new Dunkel, right), who made a name for himself under his Barrelhead brand, a pale ale which is always a welcome sight when it shows up on the festival circuit. I thought it was only fair to give the brewery a bit of time to establish itself,  hence the delay in writing about any of its beers.

(The JW Sweetman name, incidentally, is taken from one of Dublin's many defunct breweries, though there's no other connection. The "Est. 1756" on the new logo seems based on nothing other than a juvenile nose-thumb at central Dublin's other brewery a mile upriver.)

Though the brewing strategy doesn't seem to have quite dovetailed with the printing of menus, it seems that the plan at the moment is to have four permanent house beers plus a seasonal, and guests from other craft breweries. The macros haven't gone away but they seem to be getting rather marginalised and look like very poor value against the €4 house pints.

Nothing much to frighten the horses in the permanent line-up: a tasty crisp pale Weiss brewed with Weihenstephaner yeast is the token yellow beer. It balances nicely the dry grain and sharp fizz against some softer and sweeter banana and clove rock. The Red is a pumped-up muscleman version of this often insipid style, laying on thick unctuous strawberry paste and toffee. The brewery has plans to nitrogenate this when the equipment arrives but I think that would be a mistake -- it's just on the drinkable side of sticky as-is and making it denser will only make it worse.

The top seller, and with reasons beyond those of beer style fashion, is the Pale Ale. This is a dark amber beer and more in the marmaladey English IPA style to my mind than anything zingy and American. The texture is rounded and smooth, supporting gentle notes of mango from the hops and nursery sweeties from the caramelised malt. I'm reminded strongly of the aforementioned Barrelhead Pale Ale, and I think I'd have accredited it as one of Rob's beers without knowing he was involved. The one that really took me by surprise when I first met it, however, is JW Sweetman's Porter. It's a crazy fruit bomb with a highly complicated mix of lavender, liquorice, chocolate, rosewater and coffee -- exactly the sort of flavour combination that makes the dark beers from The Kernel best of breed. I'm stunned to find something of that calibre on my doorstep, though I really shouldn't be. Rob was making scary noises about taking this off and replacing it with a permanent stout, so beware: it may not last. Relax into a few pints of it while you can.

The brewery staged an open house recently for the launch of the newest seasonal on their rotation. It's called Dunkel and is a dark wheat beer. There's an interesting mix in the 5% ABV dark red affair: it has a similar subtle banana flavour to the Weiss, having been brewed with the same yeast, but there's also a major dry roasty character to it, lending it some of the profile of a schwarzbier. It's a little too fizzy to drink quickly, but when the gas is swirled out of it a bit you get something a cut above most of the commercial dark wheat beers knocking around. A few of us hangers-on also got a sneaky taste of the new seasonal, still in the tanks. The working title is Kölsch, though I don't know if that's what they'll eventually go with. It's properly crisp and grainy with a slight sulphurous nose and, other than a lack of the smoothness, only a mild appley flavour makes it less than an authentic-tasting experience. Still a good beer, however, and likely to improve with a little more age.

With great value beers across numerous styles and of a quality ranging from good to excellent plus decent food, enthusiastic staff, and a central location, JW Sweetman is doing pretty much everything you'd want from a city brewpub, which is just as well since it's the only one in Dublin. Long may this current incarnation continue.

This post is offered on foot of Irish Craft Beer Week and as a contribution to Boak and Bailey's long reads unproject. Please note that this paragraph is to be included in the computation of the minimum acceptable word count. So it is.